A Letter to My Future Muslim Daughter

During my first year out of college, I dreamed I had a daughter. It might be years from now, but I’ve looked forward to meeting you ever since. I’ve thought of you often in the work I do — of the world we must shape to prepare for your future arrival and that of many other little girls like you. I’m writing this days before the 2016 election that you’ll undoubtedly be learning about in school one day. Once you find out your mom is ancient enough to have lived through it, I struggle to imagine how I will explain this strange time in our country’s history to you. What I do know is that I will teach you an unfortunate truth: No matter who will have won the presidency this year, Muslim children had lost this election before we even reached the polls.

I don’t know how old you’ll be when you start asking me these questions. Maybe it’ll be when you’re in sixth grade, the same grade I was in the first time I felt scared enough to lie about my religion. Maybe we’ll have to talk about it a little sooner, if you break my heart and run to me after elementary school one day because a classmate called you a racial slur for the first time, the same way I ran to my dad when someone insulted my “people” in fourth grade. Maybe you’ll enjoy privileges I didn’t have and you’ll be shielded from all of that until later on — until the day that you might decide to start wearing a headscarf, and you complain to me about people suddenly asking you if you speak English.

By then, I may have already planned how I’ll string together the words to explain what’s happening right now. Yes, habibti, a presidential candidate for the free United States of America did offer a ban on Muslim immigration as an actual part of his policy platform. Yes, he stood at a podium and talked about shooting Muslims with bullets dipped in pigs’ blood, and his numbers did rise in the polls every time he said something bad about us. I know, it’s hard to believe millions of Americans supported him, but, yes, it happened, dear.

I will tell you the name of Asad Khan and have you repeat it. It is the name of a Muslim boy in the United Kingdom who hanged himself at 11 years old, only a few weeks ago, after he begged his mother to change schools because of the bullying he endured. I will sit you down and tell you about my first time talking to the Muslim Youth of North America, just last month, when I stood before a room full of hundreds of elementary and middle school students, maybe around your age, and asked them to raise their hands if they’d ever been called a racial slur. I will tell you that my heart dropped when dozens of their arms shot up into the air.

While telling you this, I will remember the face of the little girl sitting in the front row, too young to know what a racial slur even means, and how, after I explained its definition to her, she timidly raised her hand in the air too.

This is the point when I’ll remind you, because I’m sure I will have already taught you countless times before, of the legacy of Muslim women in speaking truth to power: the beautiful tradition you will inherit of not just resisting adversity in whatever form it may take, but also in defying it. I’ll tell you of the Muslim French schoolgirl who shaved her head in protest of France’s laws banning headscarves from schools, who inspired me when I was only starting middle school. I’ll tell you of the Saudi Arabian woman who protested the Saudi ban on women drivers by leading a movement of women to drive on the roads regardless. I’ll point to our bookshelf and list the names of the many Muslim women activists, innovators, and scholars who make it up, so we never forget that we are strong, and we fight to have our voices rise above the noise every single time.

I will make sure that when this day comes, I can honestly and proudly tell you that I did absolutely everything in my power to make sure things are different for you. And that alongside me were some of the most powerful Muslim superwomen you could have ever dreamed of that I didn’t have at your age, like Linda Sarsour, Zareen Jaffery, and Dalia Mogahed, who fought for you and little Muslims like you before they even met you. And I will tell you that even though Muslim women became the targets of anti-Muslim bigotry, they also became the symbols of the strength and resiliency of American Muslims in the fabric of our nation.

Until then, I’ll keep praying that your clever little head won’t be bothered by these questions, that you might gasp and widen your eyes at such a dystopia while chewing on an apple, and that we might share a moment of contemplation of how this could have ever been possible in our beloved America.

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